


Your heart's a thousand colors (and they're all shades of blue)

by maharetr



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, The TARDIS has feelings too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22599469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr
Summary: The Doctor is on her back, deep under the TARDIS's console, when there's a scrape of a key in the lock.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 11
Kudos: 119
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Your heart's a thousand colors (and they're all shades of blue)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> Title from the aching little song "All Shades Of Blue" by Gregory Alan Isakov.

That was the problem with crashing mid-trip in a TARDIS – you could be bloody any-when-where. 

The scanners are switching between showing the current location as at Arcturus—or Manussa, or the outer orbit of Keston Five, any of which would be technically possible, except for the fact that their velocity has been zero for the last twenty minutes. Oxygen levels are fine, and aside from that initial crash-bang, nothing’s been sparking. The engine isn't complaining, it's just not responding. Ditto the lights. She squints at the controls and makes a face. Emergency lighting should be brighter than this, really. Still, things seem stable, wherever they are.

The Doctor takes a steadying breath. This isn’t how she’d dreamt of starting her solo holiday.

It’s not long before she's deep under the console, a torch clenched awkwardly between her teeth. She’s still trying to get the lights back on when there's the unmistakeable scrape of a key in the lock.

"Just me," a woman's voice sings out across the console room. "Have you given her an upgrade?"

The voice makes something in the vaults of the Doctor’s memories tingle. It’s familiar, the voice and the tingling alike, but there are _so many_ familiar things that are still just out of reach, parts of herself that she hasn’t had time to investigate, yet.

"H’lo," the Doctor mumbles around the torch, then spits it out and lets it thunk to the floor. "Half a sec," she says more clearly. She clambers gracelessly out from under the console. The TARDIS is still mostly shrouded in emergency lighting, but the woman seems to be lit by the best of it. The Doctor can barely see the other side of the console, but she can make out the woman's cloud of blonde curls, and her red-lipped mouth open in an o of surprise.

"Had a bit of an upgrade all round, really," the Doctor offers, coming around the console. "I'm new. Are you new? No, you had a key; I'm newest, then. I'm the Doctor, but you probably know that." She sticks out her hand anyway.

The woman is staring at her, wonderingly, a smile spreading slowly across her face. She clasps the Doctor's hand in a warm, firm grip. "Oh, sweetie," she murmurs. "You haven't changed a bit."

The Doctor is about to work up to being offended about that – she's changed _plenty_ , thank you very much – but the tingling in her memory is sparking into a lightning storm of _remembering_ : memories and information and opinions of regenerations past. The Doctor's breath catches in her throat.

"Hello, darling," the Doctor whispers, and her voice isn't quite steady. "Your—the diary, I’ve—"

River Song's eyes are sparkling. "You're very complicated," the Doctor manages. Everything's so overwhelming, so bright, she's nearly blinded by the aftermemories exploding across her mind. " _We're_ very complicated," the Doctor manages, wonderingly.

River squeezes the Doctor’s hand and laughs, a warm, rich sound, and _oh_ it's nice to have that sound in person. "We rather are, yes."

The Doctor blinks hard, trying to clear her head. 

"When are you?" the Doctor asks.

"I'm in Stormcage, just on personal adventure leave." River releases the Doctor’s hand and pats the bag under her arm. "I was going off to Lujhimene.” Her smile turns more suggestive, and her voice lowers. “This is a far prettier adventure than I'd been expecting, though." 

The Doctor does _not_ blush. She pointedly looks away from the deepening smirk on River’s face. River leans back against one of the pillars, and, after a moment, the Doctor joins her, their shoulders pressed together as they look around the silent, dimly lit TARDIS.

"Must say, it’s a bit darker than I expected, as well, " River says. "What happened?"

"I was heading for Arcturus. Everything was fine, and then she just—" the Doctor gestures vaguely around the room. "Just fell out of the bloody timestream.”

"Onto my head, all but literally," River murmurs, and moves towards the dark shape of the console. "Sometimes she's–" River trails off as she traces the shape of the hourglass. The display lights up under her touch, glowing under her fingers. "Yes, yes," River says affectionately, stroking the console. "I’ve missed you, too." 

"Sometimes she's just waiting for someone to come home," the Doctor whispers.

The TARDIS warms back to life around them. The bases of the pillars light up first, and, as the light spreads upward, the engines thrum to life, and with them the vibration that says that they’re _moving_. The Doctor reflexively moves towards the console, towards River. River's still gently touching various buttons and knobs—not pushing them, just saying hello—and the Doctor allows herself a moment to close her eyes and steady herself against the memories.

There’s that disconnect, the memory of having done this, having stood here many times, shoulder to shoulder, but different shoulders, different TARDIS consoles. They've done this so many times before, but not _her_. She’s not sure it’s meant to be her now, the two of them, together, but a Time Lord can only ever remember backwards, and she wants to make new memories, ones that are all hers. She opens her eyes and drinks in the sight of River touching this console.

The TARDIS stills, much too soon to have gone very far, and hangs in space. A near millennia of travelling together, and the Doctor knows the difference between the feeling of her TARDIS with ground under her and her TARDIS unmoored, floating. 

The external sensor screens are still dark, and the Doctor leans up, awkward on her tiptoes, to poke one experimentally. What comes back is very little: the screens are operational, there's just nothing to report. They are nowhere – and right now, no _when_ – at all.

"Look at you," River says appreciatively, and this time, the heat in her voice really is enough to make the Doctor blush.

"When are _you_?" River asks. She turns away from the console, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

"I'm –" _after you_ catches in the Doctor's throat, but the loss must show on her face, because the delight in River's eyes fades into concern. The Doctor tries to find a way to respond, find some way to recapture the warmth of moments ago, but her mouth is dry.

It’s only a heartbeat before River takes pity on her, the way she always has, and for the first time right now. She reaches out and touches her finger to the Doctor's lips. "Spoilers, sweetie," River murmurs. "I think we're tiptoeing around rather a lot of them right now." 

The Doctor nods, grateful and gutted all in one, her voice still trapped behind River’s finger.

River’s voice turns sly, and she drags her finger over the Doctor’s lips in much the same way she had the console. " _Speaking_ of tiptoes, I like that, " she says.

"Like what?” the Doctor asks, relieved to find that her voice hasn’t abandoned her completely. 

"Being taller than you for once."

"Only a little!" The Doctor goes up on her toes indignantly, and the grin that blossoms over River's face keeps the Doctor on her toes, even as she presses her lips to River Song's. It’s different to how she remembered it, and just as perfect, and all hers. _Theirs._

She pulls away for long enough to drop her heels to the floor, and then she lets River tilt her head back and kiss her, hard.

They've got all the time in the universe for this.


End file.
